between Henry III. and the Barons under Simon de Montfort, which ended in the defeat of the royal army, and was followed by the establishment of our representative system. The crest of the downs on which the battle was fought owes to the king its popular name of Mount Harry. A plantation of firs, known as Black Cap, marks the summit. At some little distance westward a large cross cut in the turf may still be traced, which was probably designed to invite the prayers of passers-by for the souls of the slain. In the course of the three or four centuries during which England was in a chronic state of warfare with France, the Sussex coast was subject to repeated inroads, which, though met by gallant resistance that prevented their extension inland, occasioned much local suffering and irreparable injury. Of these assaults the town of Winchelsea bore the severest brunt, and retains the most obvious traces. The old town, which stood on an insulated spit of shore, three miles further to the south-east, having been destroyed by an inundation, Edward I. in 1288 rebuilt it after a plan of his own, upon a new site. Selecting for the purpose a hill called Higham, which now rises steeply on all sides out of the marshes, but then abutted north and east on the sea, he divided the town into quarters by rectangular streets, terminated by gates on three sides, and a deep fosse for its western limit. The area, of about 150 acres, included three churches, two monasteries, and municipal buildings of proportionate dignity, besides storehouses for wine and other imports, in which the inhabitants carried on a large trade. Whether on account of its reputed wealth, or its notoriety as the harbour whence invading expeditions usually embarked, Winchelsea seems to have been especially obnoxious to the French, and its defensive strength availed it little. In the reign of Edward III. it was once fired and a second time sacked. In the next reign a third attack upon it was defeated by the spirited stand of the Abbot of Battle, but three years later it was taken and partially burnt by John de Vienne. It underwent the same fate once more in 1449. These ravages were followed by the desertion of the sea, which annihilated its harbour and commerce. The chancel of a magnificent church, containing some exquisite Decorated carving and ornamental sculpture, is the chief relic of its ancient grandeur. The rest of the fabric and the monastic and municipal buildings have perished. The gates, which are still perfect, define the original extent of the defences, but so shrunken is the present area that the 'New gate' stands a mile away among the fields. The neighbouring town of Rye more than once suffered from similar incursions, and in 1377 was nearly destroyed by fire. The Ypres Tower and Landgate are all that remain of its fortifications. Other places on the coast were at various dates scenes of fierce encounter with the French. A force which landed at Rottingdean in the reign of Richard II. defeated the Prior of Lewes with his retainers, and carried them off captive. Another band took and burnt Brighthelmston (now Brighton) in the reign of Henry VIII.; but an attack upon Seaford was successfully beaten off by Sir Nicholas Pelham, whose tomb in St. Michael's Church, Lewes, thus punningly records the exploit: What time the French thought to have sackt Sea-Foord This Pelham did repel 'em back aboard. The manufacture of iron, which was the staple trade of the county from the fourteenth century onwards, furnished its defenders with weapons ready to their hands. Ordnance was cast there as early as the reign of Henry VI., and a mortar, which long stood on Eridge Green, is said to have been the first made in England. Cannon were manufactured at Buxted in the reign of Henry VIII. by Ralph Hogge, one of a family of ironfounders, whose house, bearing their rebus, the device of a hog, and the date, 1581, is still shown. The trade grew rapidly during the sixteenth century, 140 hammer-mills and furnaces being at work in the days of Elizabeth. Many families of humble rank were raised by means of it to wealth and standing. One of them, the Fullers, was frank enough to avow this by taking for their motto Carbone et forcipibus. Nor were men of rank and gentle blood slow to seize the opportunity of enriching themselves, even at the expense of marring the chief beauty of their ancestral estates. During the seventeenth century repeated attempts were made by the Legislature to check the wholesale destruction of timber which the manufacture involved, but the enactments passed were so often evaded that it proceeded with little intermission. Save that the atmosphere may have been less darkened and polluted by the exhalations of charcoal than of coal, the Weald of Sussex at this period must have closely resembled the 'Black Country' of the Midlands to-day. All available brooks were diverted into valleys or meadows in order to form ponds for driving the hammer-mills, and dams of earth were thrown across them called 'pond-bays,' with brickwork attached for letting out the water. The din of the ponderous hammers used in smelting resounded on every side. Specimens of the manufacture are common in the shape of ornamental slabs, andirons, or brand-dogs, and chimney backs, often curiously elaborate, and occasionally artistic, in workmanship. The most famous of its products was the great balustrade round St. Paul's Cathedral, which was cast in the Lamberhurst furnace. The activity which the men of Sussex, from the noble downwards, devoted to this branch of commerce, was compatible with much patriotic ardour and chivalric enterprise. Under the Tudors and Stuarts the county contributed as goodly a number of statesmen and soldiers to the service of the commonwealth as any in the realm. The Pelhams, already named, the Fiennes, Lords Dacre of the South, the Montagus, Palmers, Shirleys, Gorings, Gages, Dobells, Ashburnhams, Carylls, and many more, took distinguished parts on one side or another in the stirring events of their time. Of the stately mansions which belonged to them in various parts of the county some are still perfect and others in ruins. Wiston, Parham, Cuckfield, Ashburnham, Street, and Petworth may be particularly mentioned. Wiston, a Tudor building much modernised, deserves pre-eminence on account of its association with the three brothers Shirley, whose careers of Eastern adventure furnish one of the most curious illustrations of the Elizabethan revival of chivalry, and were accounted so remarkable, even in their own time, as to be made the subject of a drama by Day, Rowley, and Wilkins. Concerning Street Place, a handsome example of Jacobean architecture, once the seat of the Dobells, a singular tradition is current that during the civil war a horseman, hotly pursued, rode into the hall and disappeared within a secret recess, which is only approached by the chimney-breast, whence he never emerged. Ashburnham Place, the seat of Lord Ashburnham, possesses peculiar interest. It was built by John Ashburnham, Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles I., and who, as his attendant on the scaffold, received a gift of the king's body-clothing and watch, together with the sheet thrown over his corpse, which are still treasured in the house as sacred relics. Petworth, the residence successively of the Percys, Seymours, and Wyndhams, contains one of the choicest picture galleries in England. Parham, built by Sir Thomas Palmer in the reign of Henry VIII., is noteworthy not only on account of its noble proportions, but as the depository of a unique collection of Greek MSS., Egyptian inscriptions, and medieval armour, gathered by its late owner, Lord de la Zouch, during his travels. Cuckfield Place, the residence of the Sergisons, boasts the possession of a fateful lime-tree in the park, which is believed to shed a bough as a premonition of its owner's death. Sheffield Place, Fletching, the seat of the Earls of Sheffield, is associated with Edward Gibbon, who, as the intimate friend of the first earl, spent the last few months of his life there, and is buried in the family mausoleum. At Field Place, near Horsham, a substantial Georgian mansion, Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792. He wrote Queen Mab' there, and it continued to be his home until his expulsion from Oxford. His birth-chamber has been marked by his son (who now owns the house) with an inscribed tablet, and as the shrine of his dawning speech and thought' it attracts many pilgrims. Among associations of minor interest may be noted that of the poet Collins with Chichester, of which he was a native. The cathedral, which he used to haunt in his fits of frenzy, contains a monument to his memory. Another man of disordered genius, William Blake, has linked his name with Felpham, where, during + This legend has been turned to account in Harrison Ainsworth's Rookwood. the brief period of his patronage by Hayley (who resided at Eastham), a cottage was found for him. Some of his incoherent Visions' were thence dated. During the past century Sussex has undergone some sweeping changes. The iron manufacture, after reaching its height in the seventeenth century and flourishing halfway through the next, then rapidly declined, owing to the consumption of the woods and to the discovery of iron-mines in the coal districts, which could be worked at a cheaper cost. By the end of the last century all the furnaces had been discontinued but one at Ashburnham, which lingered on until 1809, when, with its extinction, the trade came to an end. The paralysis of commercial activity in this quarter was compensated by the outburst of energy in another. The recognition which set in towards the end of the last century of the tonic virtues of sea air and bathing has brought about the aggrandisement of several little villages to the dimensions of large towns, and rendered many places populous which had been uninhabited. It will suffice to name Brighton and Eastbourne as chief examples of this metamorphosis. The influx of health-and-pleasure seekers to these resorts has led to the intersection of the county by railways, and set up a circulation of busy life which must indefinitely increase. But in spite of this local vitality, the inland districts, especially the Weald, have, since the cessation of the ironworks, lapsed into a condition not far removed from the sylvan and pastoral stillness whence they originally emerged. It is evident, indeed, that the agricultural community can have been but little affected by the presence of the industrial and commercial energy formerly stirring in their midst. The wheel-plough still used by the South Down farmers is a product of 'old experience,' which is believed to have been gradually maturing from time immemorial. However strange it may appear in the eyes of modern agriculturists, it proves admirably suited for its purpose. As described by a recent writer, it is a mosaic of wood, fitted and shaped and worked as it were together, well seasoned first, and built up like a ship by cunning of hand,' each part having a separate name. It is contrived to suit various depths of soil on sloping ground covered with stones, where an iron plough would be more easily broken, and made to turn easily, so that the earth of each furrow is thrown in the same direction, and a level field is laid out for the reaper. The conservative tendency, of which this is a favourable example, has, however, the defects of its qualities.' There are rural districts into which some of the most obvious agricultural improvements have failed to penetrate. Within a few miles of such a town as Hastings you may see draught-oxen employed in the fields and roads. The sickle or scythe and the flail are commonly used for reaping and threshing in the neighbourhood of Horsham. In a village but four miles from that town, which the writer visited in the summer of 1881, he found the inhabitants calmly content to forego what 'one has come to look upon as the barest necessary of civilised life, a post office; their letters being collected by a youth who perambulated the lanes with a cow-horn. Survivals of ancient practices, fast becoming obsolete elsewhere, are still to be met with here. In the parish church of West Grinstead (and probably others) one aisle is set apart for the men and another for the women; all householders and their wives being entitled to seats in right of their several tenements, the names of which are inscribed upon the pews on either side. Along the coast of Pevensey Bay one may meet peasants with flat pieces of wood called backsters,' fastened to the soles of their boots to assist them in walking over the rough shingle, a rude expedient doubtless handed down from a remote period. It is not surprising to find a few veritable relics of the Dark Ages lurking in these recesses. Mr. Warter, the vicar of West Tarring, near Worthing, has testified to the prevalence among the peasantry thereabouts of such superstitions as the following. Pills made of spiders' webs are prescribed by unqualified practitioners as a remedy for ague. Warts are charmed away by pronouncing a magic formula. Evil spirits are exorcised. It is believed that to cure a child afflicted with hernia you must pass it through a split sapling ash nine times before sunrise on the 20th of March, and, in the event of the tree's closing up, the patient will be healed; but should the tree dwindle, so will the life. Horse-shoes are nailed over doors to avert witches. On the occurrence of death in a household the bees belonging to it are 'waked,' to prevent the same fate befalling them. 'Funeral biscuits' are baked expressly for those who visit the house on the day of interment. Among the peasants of the South Downs a belief in the existence of fairies, or, as they call them, 'Pharisees,' has not died out. The 'hag-tracks,' or circular growths of fungus, which abound on the hills, are attributed to their agency. Mr. Lower, in his Contributions to Literature, recounts some curious narratives in connection with this subject. It is intelligible that these old-world beliefs and customs should have retained firm hold in a county whose natives cling with such singular tenacity to the soil. Many farmer families, says Mr. Lower, have inhabited the same district for two, three, four, or even five centuries. He gives one instance of a high sheriff who selected all his javelin-men from his own resident tenantry bearing the name of Botting. The South Down shepherds have followed their special calling from generation to generation. The persistence of the same family names for a long series of years will arrest the attention of any observer who visits the churchyard of the village where he happens to be staying. • The Seaboard and the Down, vol. ii. pp. 278–88. |